


Counting Out Time

by Delphi



Series: Snape of St. Brutal's [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Drama, Dubious Consent, M/M, Manipulation, Reform School, Seduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 03:29:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1673036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus considers the virtue of perseverance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Out Time

December had only just begun, but Severus was already giving thought to the reflective essay the sixth-year students had been assigned by Professor McGonagall for the Christmas holidays. The title was to be "The Most Important Lesson I Have Learned at St. Brutus's School," and the work would join such other holiday efforts as "What I Would Like to Do After Leaving St. Brutus's School," "Why I Must Show Respect for My Schoolmates," and "Town Weekends Are a Privilege and Not a Right."

'Perseverance,' he thought, would make a good topic. 'Self-Control' or 'Remorse' were too obvious and would only make Professor McGonagall read the essay more closely than she needed to. He could get at least three paragraphs out of the fact that he actually found himself being challenged as an upperclassman, not least by Professor Flitwick and Professor Vector's extra assignments, and he was now responsible for developing the optimum study habits needed to succeed at university. Onto that, he could graft some bollocks about overcoming his disappointment in his assignment as Building Monitor and taking the opportunity to learn many new skills that might prove useful in his future life, whether in owning a home or facing any unfamiliar challenge, and so on and so forth.

Outside the scope of the essay but germane in theme were his continued experiments with Filch. He had kept at it, poking cautiously at the caretaker's defences, and to his pleasure was now beginning to see some real results. He read to Filch three nights a week and on Saturday afternoons, like clockwork, having finished _Great Expectations_ and moved on to _The Woman in White_. There was a hot drink provided on each of the evenings, usually milk and honey, but it had been hot chocolate on three particularly good occasions when Filch had confiscated a bar of Cadbury's from one of the fifth-year boys. A package of digestives had recently appeared in Filch's desk drawer for Saturday sessions, from which Severus had pocketed a few extra biscuits to trade.

Filch had yet to ask for anything in return besides the reading, but it was only a matter of time. He hardly looked at Severus when they were alone together, his eyes always conspicuously turned away, glancing worriedly around, or fixed to the wall, or staring glumly down at his hands. Yet Severus increasingly caught him peeping during the day: in the corridors between classes, or in the chapel on Sunday, or outside during one of the students' mandatory trudges around the yard.

It was like feeding a stray dog, Severus thought, assessing his progress. You were supposed to put the scraps down on the ground and sit some distance away, very still and very quiet, as though you didn't even care if the dog paid you any attention. Then, the next day, you put the food a little closer, and a little closer the day after that, until you had the dog eating out of your hand. Too much too quickly and you would frighten it away.

“I’ll give you a blowie if you help me with my essay about the six hundred poem,” Pettigrew whispered in his ear.

They were in the library, and Severus was finishing up some history notes and thinking idly about monitor duty. In particular, he was thinking about whether he wanted to have a wank before supper or save it up until after his evening with Filch.

"Two," Pettigrew whispered again, shifting closer to him on the bench and bringing with him a waft of nervous stink.

Severus had a feeling he could move it up to three if he let Pettigrew keep babbling, but he only sighed. “‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ essay? That was due last week.”

“Professor Flitwick gave me an extension. Lupin was supposed to help me with it, but—”

Severus held up his hand to indicate that he did not care about the details. He considered the offer. Writing two pages for Pettigrew was, in a way, more difficult than writing two pages for himself. He could write it point form and leave it to Pettigrew to mangle the spelling, but it would still take effort to come up with a believably banal and marginally incoherent thesis that could both read as Pettigrew's own work yet still achieve a passing mark. Then again, a blowjob was a blowjob. Two blowjobs were two blowjobs.

At that point, the part of Severus's brain that was thinking about Pettigrew conferred with the part of his brain still thinking about scraps.

"You room with Potter, don’t you?” he asked, tapping the end of his pencil against his lower lip thoughtfully.

Pettigrew's sweaty face creased in confusion, but he nodded.

"Does he really have a stash of dirty pictures?”

Pettigrew went pink. "How would I know that?"

He was a terrible liar, not least when telling the truth held the opportunity for attention. Pettigrew had all the hallmarks of a coward, but in Severus's experience he was so used to being beaten that you couldn't bully him into anything. He could, however, be flattered into selling his own mother. Severus merely stared at him, one eyebrow arched.

"I shouldn't say..." Pettigrew conceded, coy now.

"I want one," Severus said. "It doesn't have to be the best one. Tits will do."

Pettigrew bit his lip.

Severus shrugged. "If you don’t think you can get one…"

"I can," Pettigrew protested. "I'll get you one. Just make it a good paper."

Two days later, Severus exchanged one exquisitely mediocre paper for what proved to be a surprisingly valuable piece of pornography. He had been expecting one of the Page 3 cut-outs that had been recently circulating on the black market, attributed to Potter, but Pettigrew had nicked a full page from a naturist magazine. Not just tits, but fanny as well. The page was nearly falling apart from frequent foldings and unfoldings, and there was tell-tale crinkling attesting to its utility, but that was fine for Severus's purposes. 

He brought it with him to his next curfew patrol with Filch and waited until the last lights-out bell before handing it over.

"I found this hidden inside one of the loo rolls in the second floor lavatory."

He watched Filch's face carefully as the man unfolded the picture. The prudish shock he had half hoped for didn't appear, but to his delight, Filch's gaze darted to him for an instant and then retreated to the naked woman as if she were the safer option.

"You said to bring any contraband I found to you," Severus reminded him.

Filch hurriedly folded the picture back up and put it in his shirt pocket. “Right,” he said shakily and then cleared his throat. “Good. Don’t want to be looking at mucky stuff like that.”

“Pornography is demeaning to women,” Severus said primly. He had read that in a more respectable publication.

Filch nodded uncertainly. He hesitated for a moment and then began his rounds. Severus trailed after him, giving him a minute to recover before adding, thoughtfully: 

"A man offered to buy me a dirty magazine once."

Filch missed the English room lock and nearly dropped his keys. "What?"

Severus schooled his features into a mask of unconcerned obliviousness, but he savoured the words as he repeated himself more clearly. "A man offered to buy me a dirty magazine once."

"What man?" Filch asked, his frown deeper than Severus had expected. 

He shrugged. "Just a man from town." 

Briefly, he thought of Ray Fothergill—then settled instead on the hazier memory of the man who had first offered him a fiver for a blowjob. Severus wasn't certain he could pick him out of a crowd again; for all he knew, they had passed in the street a dozen times since. It had all happened very quickly, or it had seemed that way at the time. Brown hair. Big hands. Mustard-yellow trousers.

_You’re from the borstal, aren’t you?_

"Where was this?" Filch asked, and the pressing tone in his voice made Severus's fingers twitch.

"At the train station," Severus said, shrugging again, nonchalantly, despite the sudden cramp in his stomach. "In the toilets."

“What were you doing there?” Filch demanded.

Now that was interesting. Filch definitely knew what went on at the train station. A few of the other boys whom Severus suspected had earned the occasional fiver called it Queen's Cross, and from what Severus had heard it was a destination for all manner of perverts in northern Scotland. There was always at least one man hanging about on town weekends, but according to Evan Rosier, who'd had leave to travel when his mother was ill, the place was even busier when school was in.

"What do you think?" Severus said, indulging in an eye-roll for verisimilitude and wondering if Filch went down there on his days off to suck some other man's prick. "I had to use the toilet and none of the shops would let me use theirs."

Filch said nothing—only looked at him for a split-second, or at his lips maybe—before going on to the next door and locking it. He checked the doorknob once, then twice.

"I was minding my own business," Severus continued, "when this man came up and said hello. He asked what my name was, and if I went to school here, and if I wanted him to buy me a dirty magazine. That's all."

He watched with interest as Filch's jaw worked silently. He saw him swallow, his throat bobbing. 

"He didn't...take any liberties, did he?" 

There was something odd in Filch's voice that Severus couldn't easily identify. He looked flustered, but not really in a turned-on sort of way. He sounded as though he hadn't wanted to ask the question. 

Severus paused, inclined to push but momentarily second-guessing himself. He still wanked over the memory sometimes, brief though it was. Sucking a man's prick had seemed nastier the first time, because he hadn't entirely known what was going to happen. He had already been making spunk for nearly a year then, but he still hadn't been prepared for the sudden spurt in his mouth, like a wet, salty sneeze. He thought of how big the man's prick had seemed, and the unexpected hairiness of it, and the ginger beer he had bought afterwards to chase the taste away.

He shook his head, opting to err towards caution. Patience, he thought. One scrap at a time. "I washed my hands and left."

Filch looked down at the keys sticking out of the lock on the music room door and muttered gruffly to them: "If anything like that happens again, you tell me, all right?”

A laugh threatened to bubble up in Severus's mouth, but he caught himself. His teeth clamped down on his tongue until all that escaped was a puff of air through his nose. He nodded solemnly, for all that Filch was carefully not looking at him.

"I will," he promised.

Perseverance, he mused as he shadowed Filch's steps politely on the rest of his rounds, was really about self-confidence. When you knew you were stronger than the problem you were attempting to surmount, then you could find the patience and endurance to persevere until you had beaten it. 

He made note of this, intending to put it in his essay. It was good, that. Professor McGonagall would like it.


End file.
